So your PC is a dual two-gigahertz beast machine with a gig of RAM and a soundcard with 5.1 Dolby output. You even claim to be able to tell a 192kbps MP3 from the original CD on it. Nothing less for your gamer’s haven cum home theatre.
Well, those on the bleeding edge get the instant obsolescence they deserve. Check out AOpen’s latest: the AX4B-533Tube. And dig that product spec!
A valve driven motherboard…surely it’s a joke?
If it’s a joke, they’re taking it as far as they can. HardOCP has pictures of the board from the Computex trade show in Taiwan. Reading the Slashdot discussion – and yes, it was on Rocknerd first! – it appears they’re going for the gimmick value, i.e. a valve final stage on a solid-state amplifier.
Supporting the gimmickry theory is the use of audiophile voodoo in the marketing material: it has a nice capacitor! No-one pays money for snake oil like audiophiles. I’d be surprised if they didn’t include a green marker with every board.
Doing this seriously might be worth the effort for good sound, but (a) the computer would have to be in another room (high-end motherboards are not quiet), and (b) the way to do it would be a high-quality digital decoder going to six channels of serious audiophile valve amplifier.
And then there’s by far the most important part of the entire chain: the speakers. Also the part you can pay as much money for as you like if you want serious quality.
If you wanted serious results from this approach, valves on the motherboard is the last thing you would bother with.
We often beat Slashdot… the fact that America is a day behind everyone else helps.
…And one of the reasons that valves were replaced with transistors in the first place is that valves go *boom* when they overheat…I can imagine the size of the fan needed to cool this baby! If the target market are such audiophiles, why aren’t they playing their vinyl albums on their $30,000 turntables instead?